Buttertea at Sunrise Read online

  “Please eat. We will eat later.”

  I nibble at the curry that stings my throat and makes my eyes water. Nima begins to gurgle and startled I let my spoon drop back. Nima’s sounds are identical to someone choking, yet the boy continues to make his noises without any signs of being upset. Neither Chimmi nor her mother is paying any attention. Over the rim of my plate, I study Nima. His eyes are glazed and his gaze is fixed into the distance. His movements seem slow and mechanical.

  Pema squats in front of the open woodstove.

  “We have to make fire in the summer, too,” she explains and gently blows into the sooty opening. “It gets hot, but at least it is dry. We have to keep everything dry because of Nima.” Pema points at her son and frowns.

  I want to ask her about Nima. Maybe she will bring him to physio. A little excited, I wonder if he will be my first patient in Mongar, but I decide to wait with my enquiries until Pema volunteers some information. Meanwhile the curry burns its way down my throat and my eyes brim with tears.

  “Too hot for you?” Pema asks with a concerned look.

  “No. No, it’s great.” I shake my head and manage a smile. I would rather eat the entire bowl of curry than disappoint this kind woman with her silent child.

  “You’ll come again soon, isn’t it?” Pema asks when we say goodbye.

  I nod and wave to the children. “Of course—thank you so much.” Chimmi follows me with huge bright eyes and cries, “Goodbye, auntie!”

  I put on my shoes and fumble for the umbrella. Truthfully, I am not at all ready to leave, not yet. Karma darts outside to show me the way, but the beam of his flashlight is swallowed by the fog and the rain. The dark night looms before me like the entrance to a haunted house.

  So, this is it; I am about to face my first night alone in my new home. The prospect is terrifying, and suddenly I wonder why I only ever imagined what Mongar would look like, never how it would feel. Pema adjusts the raincoat on my shoulder and I quickly pull up the zipper. When I turn around once more, the silhouettes of Chimmi and her mother are outlined in the lighted door frame.

  “You come again,” Pema repeats, and as I head into the wet murkiness of the monsoon night, I clutch her words like a lifeline.

  Back in my classroom, alone and tucked under my mosquito net, the cheerful voices and reassurance of Pema’s home are quickly replaced by a miserable emptiness. Images of my room at home, the comfort of my bed in the corner below the slanted wood ceiling, and the honking of Canada geese drifting in through the window start circling in my mind. Suddenly, I feel the barren silence of Mongar’s cement walls as acutely as if they were touching me. The candle flickers tenuously while a squad of flies, mosquitoes, and who knows what swirls around my head. I blow out the candle and crawl deeper into my sleeping bag. In the darkness, I listen to the mosquitoes’ concert and wonder if the fleas are already marching in.

  I wake up in the middle of the night. A loud alarm is going off right beside my ear. I reach for the flashlight but still see nothing. The threatening, shrill buzzing sound continues, and I clamber from underneath my mosquito net to investigate the state of emergency. Ready to grab my passport and my diary, I plan my escape. Then, as abruptly as it began, the noise disappears.

  I light a candle and stare at the ceiling. Immediately, the black beetle I noticed earlier resumes its mission, throwing itself headlong into the walls. The rain continues to play drums on the roof, and eventually I fade off into a restless sleep.

  The next morning, the rain continues. It is the middle of June, and the monsoon has just begun. I was told to expect it to last for at least three months.

  My quarters smell musty and mouldy, and within a few hours, my belongings feel damp. My hair hangs limply in my face, and my skin itches all over.

  Outside, the noise of the construction site fills the air. Most insistent of all is an endless cacophony of hammers. It is not a noise one gets used to and ignores. The uneven racket pierces the ears and sets up a disturbing vibration in the skull, hitting on the most sensitive nerve.

  Now and then, there are loud shouts in Bengali or Hindi. I guess they are orders, instructions, or perhaps even a greeting. Then, somewhere in the mist, a generator springs to life, roaring and sputtering as the diesel fuel fills the chambers.

  When the rain eases, I slide a few steps towards the hospital. A huge scar of bare soil gapes to the right of the main building. In its middle, waving metal rods pierce the concrete foundations of two new buildings. Among an apparent chaos of heaps of stones, old oil drums, and piles of sand sit women, children, and old men, hunched on the ground, patiently beating heavy axe-sized hammers onto blocks of stone. Clunk, clunk . . . clunk, clunk, the sound reverberates between sheets of mist. Mechanically, driven by a force astounding for such skinny arms and slender shoulders, they turn boulders into rocks, then stones, and then pebbles. One huge piece successfully crumbled, the next one is rolled forward and thrashed with the same unremitting stubbornness, until all that is left is a pile of gravel.

  One of the women turns her head and stares at me long and hard. Her simple, orange sari is mud-caked. The loose end is wrapped over her head as if to protect her from the wetness and misery all around. On her arms a few bangles clink together, singing a cheerless tune. Beside her, a boy of maybe twelve years does not bother to look up. He feverishly attacks his rocks; perhaps his speed interrupts the monotony. Feeling sad and guilty for my own idleness, I turn to follow the “new” road leading to the bazaar.

  The muddy lane snakes up and to the left around a hilltop, and having reached its highest point, it abruptly ends in the middle of a huge green field—a football field. Maybe a hundred metres ahead and raised up on an embankment five or six metres high, Mongar’s bazaar oversees the valley behind me. The far edge of the football field also offers an unobstructed outlook over Mongar Hospital. Below a protruding hilltop, which serves as an emergency helicopter pad, the green roof of the hospital is sheltered among big leafy trees. The building is designed in a square, hollowed by an enclosed courtyard, with the glassy dome of the operation theatre sticking up in the far corner. Behind the hospital, the road disappears in the trees and emerges further down at an open space, lined with many separate staff buildings. Construction noise fills the air.

  Chortens and prayer flags are found near Mongar’s soccer field.

  I cross the field and arrive at a set of steep steps at the base of the bazaar’s fortification. The houses of the bazaar line a muddy road cut into the hillside. There are three “hotels” for “Fooding and Lodging,” and shops open their doors on the ground floors of the remaining buildings. Every shop has a number and a name printed in bold white letters on a blue sign. The upper words must be written in Dzongkha, the beautiful Bhutanese script. Underneath, English translations inform me about the shops and their owners: Shop No. 4, Dechen Lhendrup; Shop No. 6, Karma Yeshey; Shop No. 7, Dorji Choden. Unsure of whether to turn to Dechen, Karma, or Dorji, I postpone my shopping for a closer inspection.

  The buildings are magnificent works of art. Wooden beams frame white stones, and the second floor projects like a gallery, supported on wooden pillars. Trefoil-style window frames are carved in smooth arches and painted with flowers, jewels, and other auspicious designs. The walls leading up to overhanging roofs are also carefully carved in intricate trims and painted in joyous colours and patterns. A few windows have iron grids shaped in a traditional endless knot or a wheel.

  Cautiously stepping over the threshold into the first shop, I find myself in a dark room with one naked bulb throwing a gloomy light on shelves of non-perishable items, cheap reproduction clothes, plastic ware, flashlights, pots, matches, coke bottles, boxes with nails and other hardware. Wire baskets hanging from the ceiling are filled with spicy potato chips, sandals, Tupperware, soap containers, string, and packets of Maggi noodles. A big barrel with lentils stands on the floor, the one beside it contains dried beans. Huge sacks of rice and flour are opened, but no sign indica
tes the cost. A basket contains some bruised bananas and green, pear-like fruit.

  “Kuzuzang po la!”

  The man behind the counter speaks in a heavy slur and seems to suck on something in his mouth. Then his lips part and reveal black-stained teeth between dark red gums. He looks at me with interest, continuing to wrap a broad green leaf into a tiny package.

  “Kuzuzang po la!” he repeats loudly and waves me with a huge hand towards him. His lips part even further and dark red juice collects in a little pool on his lower lip. His greying beard is patchy and equally stained, and the stare of his small eyes is disconcerting even if friendly. Suddenly, he coughs, and in one unexpected agile movement, turns and spits noisily into the darkness behind the counter. Too intimidated to even offer a courteous greeting, I flee the store.

  3

  first encounters

  My third day in Mongar begins with a visit to the weekly Sunday “subjee bazaar,” the vegetable market. As Pema had advised me, at eight o’clock sharp I head up the road to the “market”—a fancy name for a muddy patch of grass where farmers unload their crops on the ground. To me, it looks like a stampede. Villagers sit or stand behind their goods, and a huge crowd of people rushes around, trying to buy as much as possible as fast as possible. The supply is limited and not particularly diverse: piles of chillies—red and green and of various sizes; spinach leaves bound with dried grass into bushy bundles; a basket full of sugar cane; some green beans; a few tins filled with colourful powders that smell rather pungent; tennis-ball-sized white cakes of stinking cheese wrapped in banana leaves; and a few brown eggs packaged carefully into cans filled with cracked corn.

  I stand helplessly and watch the chaos. Pieces of conversation in a foreign language whirl all around me. In some areas, heavy bargaining raises an argument. An old lady shouts furiously at a thin Indian man who is busy filling an entire load of potatoes into a heavy hemp bag. Beside me, three different people are thrusting their well-worn plastic bags at an old man selling gnarly carrots.

  Intimidated, I try to figure out the cost of all these delicacies. It seems that for everything, some one-ngultrum and maybe five-ngultrum notes are the highest value needed. Even if not plentiful, food is definitely cheap. (Twenty ngultrums are not even one dollar.) But how do I ask for anything? Desperately, I look around for a sign of Pema or Karma.

  A young woman carrying a woven bamboo basket on her back pushes past me. She is barefoot, and her dress is carelessly wrapped and hitched up above her ankles. Like all the women at the market, she wears a kira, a long piece of rectangular cloth wrapped around the body and fastened by two buckles over the shoulders. A belt around the waist keeps everything in place. Her jacket, the toego, is flung over her basket. She stoops to pick through a pile of beans.

  Ever-increasing floods of people push through the undesignated aisles and elbow their way to the preferred sellers. I can hardly see what is displayed on the ground. Young lads, fat women, little girls, and endless numbers of thin, wiry Indian men equipped with huge sacks stoop to the best bargains. Like a frozen statue, I am fixed to my patch of mud and stare at the turmoil. Everyone is moving fast, talking loudly, and filling their shopping bags. Everyone except me.

  A steady, warm rain continues to soak sellers, buyers, and the earth-smeared goods. I start to wander aimlessly between piles of vegetables and fruits, trying not to step on anything, trying not to get pushed over. Soon I realize that the amount of food for sale is dwindling fast and further dallying will cost me my vegetables for the coming week. Yet, how do I get the stuff laid out on the ground to end up in my backpack? There is no one to ask. I wait to see a familiar face but receive only a few stares of old, wrinkled women sitting beside their daughters who are busy bartering. “Nigzing, nigzing!” someone cries. “Mangi, meme, sam!” “Sam mala!” “Gila, meme! Sam!” the shouting continues. By the time I am ready to choose something, all is sold out. Gone. Finished. Everyone is packing up.

  Frustrated and drenched, I shoulder my empty backpack. On the way home, I meet one of the hospital employees, fully loaded with two woven bags overflowing with vegetables.

  “You must go to bazaar,” he advises, pointing at the façade of houses along the main street. “You will get things in shop there. All foreign things. You will like.”

  I am lucky. In one of the shops, I discover a man who speaks English, and I recite my shopping list. He nods cheerfully and immediately shows me an assortment of tea, all in its original leaf form, which causes more confusion. I manage to choose a packet of Red Label and acquire a tiny strainer, a bag of powdered milk, and some not-so-clean and not-so-white sugar. As a special treat, I ask for some cookies. Then the shopkeeper climbs onto a shaky stool and, from a rope suspended from the ceiling, unties two rolls of toilet paper wrapped in foil. He scribbles some numbers on an old piece of newspaper and smiles. We look at each other in mutual sympathy.

  His name is Rinzin Tshockey, and he owns and runs this little shop. A short man, almost disappearing behind his counter, he seems in full control of his dominion. The shop is brighter than the ones I had been to earlier, lit quite efficiently by a huge gas lamp on the counter between several jars of sweets. There seems to be more variety in the goods on the shelves. I notice it especially in the cookie section.

  “All coming from India,” he explains. “Samdrup Jongkhar bus is arriving every week, but during monsoon, there is often roadblock. These days we are needing many food for people. So many people in Mongar. Good business now, only power is always going off.”

  Rinzin Tshockey points at the hissing gas lamp. “Many Indians coming here for Kuru Chhu power project. In some years, we have good electricity.”

  “Do you bring all of this food from India?” I ask.

  “Not all, madam. But every month I take a truck to Samdrup Jongkhar, you know, to our border with India. I am thinking to expand this store. Last time I was buying some Coke. Do you want?”

  Rinzin Tshockey points at a lone bottle of Coca-Cola among a dusty shelf full of canned fruit juices that announce their Bhutanese origin with the label “Druk.”

  Rinzin Tshockey sells all kinds of produce from India in his Mongar shop.

  Amused, I shake my head. I am not yet desperate enough to buy Coke.

  “Please let me know what you need. I will bring from Samdrup Jongkhar,” the eager shopkeeper offers.

  “Thank you.” I nod and inspect the other opened bags and baskets in front of the counter. There is a basket with potatoes and, miraculously, another one with broccoli.

  “I will get for you, madam. How many you need?”

  Rinzin Tshockey picks up several potatoes, turns them in his hand, checks them for bad spots, and drops only the most satisfactory ones into another plastic bag for me. He adds a head of broccoli.

  “Please, Doctor . . .” Already the word has spread throughout town that the blond foreigner is a doctor. I have no idea who anyone is, and yet everyone else seems to be well informed about my identity. “Doctor” is a word they know. “Physiotherapist” will certainly take a while to be remembered. Doctor. I try the title on and find that it sits comfortably. All of a sudden, I feel more respected, more of a somebody than just an odd foreigner.

  “Please, Doctor,” Rinzin Tshockey repeats. “Please, you come again.”

  He bids me farewell with another impish smile, and I, Madam Doctor, turn back to the road.

  Mongar does not claim any flat land, other than the football field. Everywhere else houses cling to slopes of varying degrees, fields are terraced, walkways snake along inclines, and the road is cut into the mountain. Life seems to balance on the verge of sliding down the hillside.

  I take the long way back to the hospital, following the road as it curves in a u-shape away from the bazaar towards the dzong. Dzongs are fortresses built during Bhutan’s unification in the seventeenth century in an attempt to repel Tibetan invaders. Today they house both the governing administration as well as a monastery for the monk
body. Huge, impressive buildings with Tibetan-style inward-slanting walls, they dominate the view of most Bhutanese towns of any size.

  Following an inconspicuous footpath up the slope, I pass a few large houses and find myself suddenly standing beside the upturned cone of a white stone chorten, poised at the edge of a rather steep cliff. A soft lapping sound, somewhat like clothes fluttering on a line in the yard, draws my attention, and I notice a few scattered flags on the hilltop. Suspended from long wooden poles, the white bands of cotton cloth are flapping idly back and forth. Like their neighbour the chorten, the prayer flags have aged considerably. The material is torn in places, badly beaten by wind and weather. From close up, I can barely identify the print. All that is visible is row upon row of symbols in a foreign script. Throughout the length of the cloth, a square box with texts and pictures is repeated several times without variation. The same prayer?

  Though bleached and faded by time, the flags charm me into staying. I imagine the wind, how it breathes by my little outlook and picks up a prayer; how the devout petition is carried over the ridge, down into the next valley and up a mountain where more prayer flags join the chorus. It waltzes around every house, over every pass in the country. Far and wide, like a faithful servant, the wind collects and strengthens the softly sung lyric, and then carries it up, up, up . . .

  My dreamy contemplation is interrupted by the figure of a man emerging from the bushes. He throws me an expressionless glance and disappears. Soon after, a young boy surfaces out of the thicket. He, too, stares at me and then walks on without a word. I am intrigued.

  Where did these two come from? Carefully, I retrace the footprints that my two silent visitors have left to a trampled patch of grass surrounded by thick shrubs. A penetrating smell prevails. I turn on my heels and contemplate the two new vistas: a lovely chorten on the edge of a cliff, and the public toilet.